Week of February 25, 2018 in UCIS

Friday, February 23 until Sunday, February 25

(All day)Seminar

Global Health Mini Course

Location:

Carnegie Mellon University

Sponsored by:

Global Studies Center along with Carnegie Mellon University

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With each emerging infectious disease, the interconnectedness of populations around the globe becomes more pronounced. Diseases not only affect the health of communities, but they have a profound impact on political, economic, and social stability within countries and regions. This course engages the interdisciplinary nature of global health by approaching the issue through the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) developed by the United Nations. The SDGs range in focus from good health and well-being to gender equality to clean water and sanitation to affordable, clean energy. By engaging the ways that health has a stake in these goals, the course will bring the expertise of faculty from the University of Pittsburgh and CMU to understand and address the issue surrounding global health from a myriad of perspectives and avenues. With a project-based focus, the course will assist students in engaging and impacting their local community though a global issue.

To register before January 26 (add/drop) PS 1903-1010 (10182). To register after January 26 please contact Veronica Dristas, Associate Director.

Monday, February 26

5:30 pmLecture

Narrating the 'Righteous in the Colombian Armed Conflict': A Civil Pedagogy of Solidarity for Highly Polarized and Deeply Divided Societies

Location:

4130 Posvar Hall

Sponsored by:

Center for Latin American Studies along with Department of Sociology

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Narrating the 'Righteous in the Colombian Armed Conflict': A Civil Pedagogy of Solidarity for Highly Polarized and Deeply Divided Societies
by Dr. Carlo Tognato, Universidad Nacional, Colombia (Director, Center for Social Studies, National University of Colombia)
5:30 p.m.
4130 Posvar Hall

Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Wednesday, February 28

Center for Russian and East European Studies along with Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures; Film Studies Program

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being (171 min) is a 1988 American film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Milan Kundera, published in 1984. Director Philip Kaufman and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière portray the effect on Czechoslovak artistic and intellectual life during the 1968 Prague Spring of socialist liberalization preceding the invasion by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact that ushered in a period of communist repression. It portrays the moral, political, and psycho-sexual consequences for three bohemian friends: a surgeon, and two female artists with whom he has a relationship.

Professor Martin Votruba, Head of the Slovak Studies Program at Pitt, will introduce the film.

Thursday, March 1 until Saturday, March 3

(All day)Conference

Society for French Historical Studies Conference

Location:

Hilton, Pittsburgh

Announced by:

European Studies Center on behalf of Society for French Historical Studies

Thursday, March 1

(All day)Cultural Event

THE 7TH ANNUAL MODEL AFRICAN UNION SIMULATION

Location:

WILLIAM PITT UNION ASSEMBLY ROOM & BALLROOM

Sponsored by:

African Studies Program

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In 2011, a group of African Studies students at the University of Pittsburgh participated in the college level Model African Union at the Howard University in Washington DC. After their experience in the simulation, they felt the need to promote the study of Africa among high school students in the Pittsburgh and South-Western Pennsylvania region. With the assistance of The African Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, the Pitt High School Model African Union (MAU) was launched in 2012 as an experiential pedagogical method of teaching American students about Africa. The Pitt MAU serves as an educational simulation that provides opportunities for high school students to learn about Africa by studying the African Union and its inner workings. Students learn the role, structure, and performance of the African Union (AU) while searching for solutions to Africa’s key economic, social, and political problems. Agenda items and countries are assigned to the participating schools in advance, to allow for adequate preparations for the daylong conference. Under the guidance of their teachers, students study research issues facing the AU member states and prepare to hold debates and vote on resolutions that address these issues. This year, 2018, is the seventh year of the MAU hosted at the University of Pittsburgh.

9:00 amCareer Counselling

UCIS International Career Toolkit Series: Site Visit to The Braddock Free Store

Location:

Braddock, PA

Sponsored by:

Center for Latin American Studies

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Braddock, a city that lost 90% of its population, homes, and businesses, is reinventing and revitalizing through the efforts of many citizens including its first lady Gisele Fetterman. In 2012 she founded The Braddock Free Store that works to find new uses for donated items that still have value, turning donations into valued treasures.

Center for Russian and East European Studies, European Studies Center and Global Studies Center along with Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures; Film Studies Program

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Dusan Makavejev’s Love Affair provides us with an example of cinematic reflexivity, which can be defined as any technique that reminds the viewer that he or she is watching a film. Reflexivity foregrounds the fact that film meaning is a function of a set of codes with ideological implications rather than a transparent reflection of reality. Reflexivity can be achieved through intertextuality, exaggeration of cinematic conventions or conspicuous narration that reminds us of the author’s mark on the text. These techniques are all in evidence in Love Affair, whose textual heterogeneity calls into question the earnestness of cinematic (including socialist) realism as well as the official ideologies of state communism. As Thomas Elsaesser notes, Love Affair juxtaposes three sites of meaning: “the liberating intimacy of a sexual relationship…, the public world of abstract didacticism and cold rationality…, [and] the memory of the Russian Revolution and Tito’s national liberation war”. (Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, p. 322) Our understanding of Makavejev’s view of 1960s Yugoslavian society depends on our interpretation of the ironic and tragic relationship between these three sites of meaning. (Alex Lykidis, "Love Affair," Critical Commons)

The film will be introduced Dr. Ljiljana Duraskovic, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.

4:45 pmPanel Discussion

1968: Perspectives from Eastern Europe

Location:

4130 Posvar Hall

Sponsored by:

Center for Russian and East European Studies, European Studies Center and Global Studies Center along with Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures; Film Studies Program

See Details

This round-table is a follow-up event to the screening of the Unbearable Lightness of Being (February 28, 2 p.m.) and of Love Affair (March 1, 3 p.m.) and is part of the UCIS-wide anniversary series on 1968. The panel will explore (partly based on the films and the book) the question whether 1968 has a universal meaning across geographic space and time. The round-table's contribution to the UCIS-wide event will be to tease out some of the ways in which for 1968 a “kinship system” may exist (to use Wittgenstein’s analogy), but the implications are profoundly different (in the first and second worlds, or in a distribution system that is—essentially—domestic Serbian/film festival vs. US/box-office).

Program runs from 9:00-13:30, with an 8:30 breakfast and 12:30 lunch included.

Registration deadlines: February 26th for March 3rd workshop; April 16th for April 21st workshop.
Enclose a $20.00 check for each program ($40.00 for both). Fee includes ACT 48 credit-4 -hours for each program, breakfast and lunch.) Send check payable to the University of Pittsburgh. To facilitate our records, please write on check memo: (French Immersion)